use of 'an' or 'a'

[ieatbees]

I've just been told that when a word starts with 'h' and it is a singular, it should be 'an' not 'a'. ie 'an hospital', 'an hotel' etc. I was also told that this applied to spoken and written words.

is this correct? i must confess that this is not something i have come across before.

[Quizmonkey]

This was answered at great length a few weeks back. Basically, a rather dated rule in English states that if an h-word has it's first syllable unstressed, the article should be 'an' and not 'a'. Virtually no-one uses this rule totally consistently now so it's generally best avoided: if the word begins with h, and the h is voiced, keep the article as 'a'. It's not wrong.

[Quizmonster]

It is optional whether or not to pronounce the opening �h' in words in which the first syllable is unstressed...eg habitual, horrendous, hotel, historian, horrific etc and therefore whether 'a' or 'an' is used before it. It is the lack of stress rather than any French provenance - as some claim - that matters.
However, �an hotel', specifically, is  regarded as old-fashioned though not quite extinct. The other words above are still commonly preceded by 'an'.
The Americans have an example which we do not, in that they pronounce �herb' as if there were no �h' present. Thus, they refer to �an (h)erb' just as we say: �an (h)our'.
I'm sure we all recall the judicial voice-over to the opening credits of Ronnie Barker's �Porridge'..."Norman Stanley Fletcher....you are an habitual criminal who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner...."

[Quizmonster]

I should have added above that 'hospital' is stressed on the first syllable, so the question of putting 'an' in front of it simply does not arise. It is invariably 'a hospital'.

[ieatbees]

Thanks for this that is a really comphensive answer. I did try to do a search for it but nothing came up. Thanks for your response Quizmonkey

[Peter Pedant]

blimey this is not something even I peter ped., lie awake worrying about.

[firefly]

According to the rules above, you can say 'an s' or 'an f' but not 'an d' or 'an g' making an work purely phonetically.

[Quizmonster]

That's surely because, Firefly, the letters 'f' and 's' - as well as a, e, h, i, l, m, n, o, r and x - open with a vowel sound when spoken, as in eff, aitch, en, ess, ar and so forth. I'm not sure what your point has to do with stress patterns or with a silent or a voiced 'h', but that's probably my fault.